Commonwealth Care Alliance Transportation: CTS Rides for CCA Senior Care Options and One Care

Commonwealth Care Alliance (CCA) is a nonprofit Massachusetts health plan for people who have both MassHealth and Medicare, known as dual eligible members. CareSource, a nonprofit plan from Ohio, completed its acquisition of CCA on April 9, 2025. CCA now runs just two plans: CCA Senior Care Options for members 65 and older, and CCA One Care for members 21 to 64 with a disability. CMS counted 19,006 members in the first and 26,048 in the second in September 2026.

Those two plans are all of CCA’s ride work. CCA stopped offering Medicare Advantage plans in Massachusetts for 2025, and its Rhode Island, Michigan, and California plans stopped offering Medicare plans on January 1, 2025. Regular MassHealth members ride through the state’s brokers, MART and GATRA, which the Massachusetts guide covers. MassHealth tells One Care and Senior Care Options members to call their plan for rides instead.

Who arranges CCA rides

Coordinated Transportation Solutions (CTS), a nonprofit broker in Trumbull, Connecticut, books every CCA ride. CCA’s guideline for these rides, MNG 101, took effect January 1, 2026 and was last revised January 8, 2026. It says a ride is covered only when CTS, CCA’s transportation benefit administrator, arranges it. A trip a member sets up directly with your company is not a CCA trip.

Members book in two ways:

• By phone. CTS takes CCA calls at 855-204-1410 (TTY 711), weekdays from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and from 8 a.m. to noon on weekends and federal holidays.
• In the CCA Transportation Portal or its phone app. Members view, request, and cancel trips there. CTS reviews every request before it books a transportation company.

By MassHealth’s 2026 plan lists, CTS also books rides for Fallon Health NaviCare, Mass General Brigham’s two dual plans, and Tufts Health One Care. CTS in Massachusetts shows which of those plans cover which counties.

What CCA covers, plan by plan

Both plans cover unlimited medical rides within 50 miles of the pickup in 2026 and 2027, by each plan’s benefits page, and a medical ride over 50 miles needs CCA’s prior authorization. A medical ride must go to a confirmed appointment for a Medicare or MassHealth service, inside the plan’s service area. CCA may approve a trip over 50 miles when no provider is within 50 miles and the member has no other way to get there, such as family, friends, or the bus. Each approved exception lasts at most 90 days, and then CCA decides again.

Both plans’ 2026 handbooks name chair car (wheelchair van), taxi, common carrier, and ambulance rides. The 2027 Senior Care Options handbook names taxi and livery, wheelchair vans, stretcher vans, and ambulance. Where the two plans part ways is non-medical rides.

Non-medical rides in Senior Care Options

The 10 monthly rides belong to the plan’s Special Supplemental Benefits for the Chronically Ill. In 2026, the qualifying conditions are cardiovascular disorders, diabetes, chronic lung disorders, and chronic heart failure. The 2027 handbook lists 22 groups, adding cancer, dementia, stroke, chronic kidney disease, substance use disorders, and chronic and disabling behavioral health conditions, among others.

A condition alone does not qualify a member. CCA must also find a high risk of hospitalization and a need for intensive care coordination, using claims, care assessments, or an attestation form from the member’s provider. Rides go to places such as grocery stores, pharmacies, church, the gym, and AA meetings, stay within 50 miles, and do not roll over. Since January 1, 2026, the guideline allows no exceptions above 10 trips a month.

Senior Care Options members who qualify through the Frail Elderly Waiver can also get non-medical rides and aide assisted transportation, which adds help and an escort on trips to community services. Both need prior authorization and are separate from medical rides.

Non-medical rides in One Care

One Care moved non-medical rides into its flexible benefits for 2026, by its annual notice of change. A member gets them only when no Medicare or MassHealth service fits, the care plan includes the rides, and they meet medical necessity criteria, with prior authorization. One Care no longer covers non-medical rides over 50 miles, and MNG 101 caps them at 10 a month with no exceptions, as in Senior Care Options.

Rules that shape a CCA trip

MNG 101 and the member handbooks set the rules CTS applies before a trip reaches your schedule:

• Notice. 72 hours, not counting the day of booking. The 2027 Senior Care Options handbook and the 2026 One Care handbook also say at least 2 business days in places.
• Late cancellations. A Senior Care Options member who skips a non-medical ride, or cancels less than 2 hours before pickup, loses that ride from the month’s 10. Ask CTS what, if anything, it pays your company for a late cancellation or no-show.
• Shared rides. When two or more members go to the same area at the same time, they must share a vehicle if CCA, CTS, the transportation company, or the medical provider arranges it.
• Curb to curb. Every ride but ambulance is generally curb to curb.
• Escorts. CTS does not provide companions or escorts, so the member arranges one separately. A medical companion falls under CCA’s separate Companion Services guideline.
• Out of state. Medical rides only to a contracted provider, typically near the Massachusetts border.
• Short trips. No ride to care within 0.75 mile of home for a member who walks freely, with or without an escort.

The guideline also excludes rides to work, school, summer camps, child day care, veterinarians, casinos, bars, liquor stores, and cannabis dispensaries, and rides for relatives visiting a member in the hospital. Its list of codes that may need prior authorization names A0130 for a wheelchair van trip, S0215 for wheelchair van loaded miles, T2001 for a wheelchair van attendant, A0140 for other nonemergency trips (with modifier TS when more than two one-way trips are billed for one member on one day), and A0170 for ferry charges only. Your own rates come from your CTS agreement, not from CCA.

Adult day health rides go through the program

CCA’s guideline does not cover rides to an adult day health program, except when they are arranged by special contract with the program. It also excludes any ride that duplicates a service, such as one an adult day health program or a personal care attendant plan already provides. The 2027 Senior Care Options handbook lists transportation among adult day health services, with prior authorization.

So for CCA members who attend a day program, the program is your customer, not CTS. Ask each adult day health center in your area whether it runs its own vans or contracts the route, and price it with the adult day care transportation guide.

Who CCA’s riders are and where they live

CCA publishes member figures from its 2023 data. In Senior Care Options, 61 percent of members use a cane, walker, or wheelchair, and 41 percent mainly speak Spanish. In One Care, 30 percent use mobility aids, and half have a severe and persistent mental illness. CCA says the two plans together hold the largest dual eligible membership in Massachusetts.

That mix favors companies with wheelchair vans and Spanish-speaking drivers and dispatchers. Senior Care Options riders live in Bristol, Essex, Franklin, Hampden, Hampshire, Middlesex, Norfolk, Plymouth, Suffolk, and Worcester counties, by MassHealth’s 2026 plan list, and the plan’s 2027 summary of benefits keeps the same 10. One Care adds Barnstable and Berkshire, so CCA’s riders on Cape Cod and in the Berkshires are all One Care members.

How to get CCA trips

1. Plate and license your vehicles. Massachusetts requires RMV Livery plates on a vehicle that seats 15 or fewer, driver included, and carries riders for hire on prearranged trips (540 CMR 2.05). Your city or town may require its own license under M.G.L. chapter 40, section 22. The Massachusetts guide has the rest of the state rules.
2. Apply to CTS. Send the request form on CTS’s Transportation Providers page. The CTS provider page lists its insurance, driver, and vehicle requirements.
3. Tell CTS what you can carry. Name your counties, your wheelchair and stretcher capacity, and the languages your drivers speak, since those match CCA’s members.
4. Call adult day health programs that serve CCA members, because CCA leaves those rides to the program instead of CTS.
5. Add MART or GATRA if you also want regular MassHealth riders in the same towns.

For how plan rides fit next to Medicaid work in general, see Medicare Advantage transportation.

Who to call

• CTS ride line for CCA members: 855-204-1410 (TTY 711)
• CTS portal help for CCA members: ccamemberportal@ctstransit.com
• CTS headquarters: 203-736-8810, 35 Nutmeg Drive, Suite 120, Trumbull, CT 06611
• CCA Member Services: 866-610-2273 (TTY 711), 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., every day from October 1 to March 31 and weekdays the rest of the year
• CCA Provider Services and prior authorization: 1-866-420-9332